


Triptych of Pain: Inferno

by Anna_Hopkins



Series: Triptych of Pain [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Dark Will Graham, M/M, Murder, Rape/Non-con Elements, Serial Killers, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:34:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8003941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several months after Hannibal's escape from the FBI investigation, Will Graham is recovering from his injuries, and returns to the field in pursuit of a killer who is, thankfully, nothing like the Chesapeake Ripper. Rather, Graham has an inkling of who this killer might be... {2018-04-17: In the process of being rewritten. Will be posted separately sometime in '19.}</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> However great Season 3 would have been, I knew it would not have lived up to what I wanted from the series. So I started working on my own version. It snowballed into what follows: the Triptych of Pain, First Panel: Inferno (Hannibal's Influence).

* * *

  _Midway in our life's journey, I went astray_  
_from the straight road and woke to find myself_  
_alone in a dark wood. How shall I say_

 _what wood that was! I never saw so drear,_  
_so rank, so arduous a wilderness!_  
_Its very memory gives a shape to fear._

 _...How I came to it I cannot rightly say,_  
_so drugged and loose with sleep had I become_  
_when first I wandered there from the True Way._

* * *

Night at the Graham House, Wolf Trap, Virginia. For an area well inland of the Atlantic, the air remained humid and heavy, stirring only from the noise of hundreds of crickets calling out from the undergrowth. A thin haze seemed to linger beneath the trees, dissipating under the tires of Graham's pickup truck as he pulled into the driveway after another day of grueling physical therapy. He parked the truck as close to the door as he could get it, and by the time he got to the front door, the ex-profiler could barely wait to go back to sleep, even if he had nightmares -- he was exhausted.

It was August now; months had passed since _the incident_ , as he thought of it, and the combination of physical therapy and carefully dosed pain medication had him well on his way to recovering from the last of what the stitches held closed. Will couldn't help but stare at the shiny reddish line in the mirror while he stripped off the day's clothes; it stood out like strawberry syrup over vanilla ice cream, but none of his memories of Hannibal Lecter were sweet enough to suit that analogy.

Stepping into the shower, Will realized he hadn't thought much about Lecter in the past few days. When he first woke up in the hospital, he'd been filled with rage, then awash in grief, until a combination of the two simmered down to some general disquiet that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He had sustained that state of mind on the pain he felt when he woke up in the middle of the night to take his pills, on the fear he felt when something looked too much like Lecter in the corner of his eye. Now, late at night, he could stand in the shower and be honest with himself: he had expected the silence, the subtle excommunication of the Chesapeake Ripper from the world they'd known before him. He could live with the man gone from his view.

But not with him in his head.

Not when Will had found that dark world so welcoming, not when he had taken -- even for a moment -- those shadows into his heart, outside the scope of his role as 'bait'. Will desperately did not want to reflect further on the subject before bed, and he took a bottle of Jim Beam from the liquor cabinet to pour himself a nightcap; but seeing as it was half-empty already, decided to forgo a glass and drank straight from the bottle, which inevitably led to another bottle, until he found himself sitting in his old armchair in the dark with three empty bottles on the ground beside him -- different brands, he noticed, just before he started feeling dizzy again. As luck (or habit) would have it, he crawled into bed right as he began to pass out.

And then he was awake, more awake than he'd been all day, at five a.m. with the sky showing thin streaks of grey. He was covered in cold sweat, but couldn't remember what the nightmare had been this time. All Will had were the shivers and the sharpening pain in his stomach that reminded him it was also time for pills. He had the beginnings of a hangover, but the painkillers sometimes helped with that, too, and he was used to it in any case. Stumbling out of bed, Will filled a glass of water in the bathroom sink and washed down the little white pills, looking at himself in the mirror. Last night's postponed thoughts were floating up, waterlogged, to the forefront of his mind: he felt that he'd betrayed Hannibal for the duty Crawford had assigned him, even though logic would suggest his obligation to the Bureau should have had a higher priority.  _How many times have I gone over this in my head now?_ Still, a part of him stubbornly continued to remind Will that his betrayal had been rightly punished, and the exact details of that retribution made him shiver in the balmy air. The chills he felt, remembering that night, were something Will did not expect to overcome.

It was quiet in the house in the morning now, quieter than it used to be. Will stepped into the kitchen, about to start making the dog food he always made in the morning, when he remembered he didn't have the dogs anymore. He had needed to give them away, all except Winston, when remembering what Hannibal had fed them (technically, what Mason had fed them) stressed him too greatly. But Winston was no longer here, either; he was dead. Will had seen to that. It had been in windy March, when Winston's scratching at his bedroom door had sounded too much like a whisper, and before Will had learned to lock his guns away at night. The little gravestone out in the field marred the landscape as badly as a forest fire; the mound was a foot high at its apex, but in the nightmares Will remembered, it stood as firm and high as a mountain. He looked away from the kitchen window now. It felt like something was staring back at him from the shadows of the trees.

He left the coffee machine brewing in the kitchen, and went back to the bedroom to get ready for the day. His head was hurting at a level Will considered 'the usual', which meant he could ignore it for now and try to get on with the day. He looked in the mirror after showering and decided to shave; the medicine cabinet still had his old aftershave in it, the kind Hannibal had chided him for wearing. He left it in the top right corner out of some kind of sentimentality, but he used a different aftershave now. Will suspected that if he ever did open the bottle with the ship on it, something in him would break, and he didn't know what would seep from the broken pieces to replace it.

Eventually, the coffee machine dinged softly in the kitchen, and Will returned when he was done shaving to fill his mug. The sharp, bitter taste took away from the ache in his head just a little, and he could almost smile at that. He stared idly at the kitchen table, leaning against the counter, and thought about having breakfast for once, since he didn't usually. When the mug was empty, Will set it down beside the sink and looked through the fridge for ideas, before settling on a piece of toast and a little orange juice, which must have been his go-to breakfast at some point in the past, because he was comforted by the familiarity of the idea, but Will was having trouble remembering whether it actually _was_ his idea. He didn't mention it to Crawford or Alana Bloom, because they'd probably only make a fuss about it, but he had gotten used to forgetting parts of himself over time, if he assumed enough external points of view. The transience of his character traits didn't disturb him any more than it would disturb someone who dyed their hair often to realize they couldn't remember what it was like to have their original hair color.

Outside, the sky was turning pink; it was already nearly six. Will could stare out the kitchen window again if he wanted, the shadows had faded out, so he watched the clouds turn purple, then grey, then white, sitting with the plate and empty glass for perhaps an hour. When the sun angled just right, and started to shine through the windows, he got up and cleaned up the dishes, then went to get properly dressed for the day. His appointment for physical therapy was at eight, and then Crawford wanted to see him by noon...


	2. Chapter 2

"We've got six bodies, four states, spread out on interstate highways across the country, left in ditches two, three hours after death. Autopsies indicate sexual assault while they were still alive. Postmortem mutilations."

Will had arrived at Quantico at 12:15, expecting Jack to ask for his off-the-record advice on a case the new team was having trouble with, or for his opinion on a prospective trainee. He'd helped with both of those things before. But instead he'd showed up to a briefing on Behavioral Science's next big case: serial rape-and-murders across the country. Jack had seen him walk in, before the start of his Big Lecture, and Will had taken that to mean _sit down, you'll be here a while_ and _the case files are on the table_. And they were.

So here he was again like the past half a year of physical and mental recuperation had never happened -- five months, five minutes -- with the red thumbtacks in the map on the corkboard and the glossy 8x10s of dead faces. Will leaned on the glass-top table, feeling the corner of a stack of documents against his elbow, and knowing that once he started looking through these crime scene photos he'd have to keep looking. There were things he could take comfort in here, patterns he always saw, habits he always went along with; Will Graham had learned the basics of the case by the time Jack finished the department briefing, and as the crowd filtered out, he was joined at "the stacks" by the tired-looking head of Behavioral Science. "What do you think?" Same tone, same face, same Jack Crawford as always (plus or minus some scarring).

"What's the catch here, Jack?" Will liked that he could be frank with Jack in situations where no one else would dare to be. It was part of why they still got along after all was said and done. As the man formulated an answer, Will stared at the scars on either side of his neck; against the man's complexion the lines reminded him of comet tails. He wondered where that comparison had come from. "This kind of case doesn't just get to Quantico on its own," he added as an afterthought.

"They've been looking for this bastard for months," said Crawford, creasing the stack of papers he was holding. "Months of following protocol, with minimal results, and now, _now_ , he gets cocky, starts leaving _notes_ at the scene." He levelled a gaze at Will that spoke volumes as to his present mood. "Notes to _you_ , Will." Gesturing with his free hand at the thin red folder at the top of one of the stacks.

"So you called me in for _this_ after all." Something bitter was simmering in Will's throat, and he recognized it as resentment. "I don't want my name attached to this case, Jack. I don't want to get closer than the files. These stitches still _hurt_." Flicking his eyes up at the other man's scars, an action that didn't go unnoticed.

And for once, that actually got through to Jack Crawford. He raised a large hand to one of the puckered pink lines, and took it away, before acquiescing. "I won't make you look. Let me know if you change your mind." Whatever small victory that was. _Stubborn bastard._

~

He brought the file back to Wolf Trap after that. Left it on the kitchen table while he made dinner. Skimmed the latest reports over a venison steak and a mashed potato. Looked through the crime scene photos in chronological order with a glass of whiskey. Several hours after sunset, he got around to the note itself; it was just about the last thing in the file. Will found himself rather less curious about the note than he would have in the past, and in fact, he was even less interested in the case than he'd expected to be. A dull ache starting in his stomach told Will to take his evening medication and go to bed, so he brought the photo of the note into his room and left it on the nightstand while he dry-swallowed four pills of varying sizes in the bathroom. Normally Will would have brought the damn thing to the bathroom with him, brought it all around the house till he had finished reading it several times over, and then obsessed over it before going to sleep; that was the old method. Now, he felt no habitual compulsion to do so -- just as he didn't feel like drinking as much today as he had the day before. Some subtle shift in his personal priorities had taken place when he wasn't looking, and it felt both strange and pleasant to be caring about his healthy habits before his unhealthy ones. How long it would last, however, he couldn't say.

Eventually, he got around to opening the folder with the photograph of the note. It was shorter than he'd expected from this man -- something about the case had made him think "nonsensical manifesto" -- and he only had to read it once to know who had written it.

_Mister Graham_

_Do you remember_  
_what I said_  
_about hawks?_  
_Birds of a feather_  
_flock together._

"...Matthew Brown."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited chapter count down to 6, from 18. The full Triptych should have 18 chapters.

**Author's Note:**

> "Dear Pilgrim,
> 
> You honor me...you're very beautiful...I offer 100 prayers for your safety. ..."  
> \--------------------------------  
> I updated this post on 2016-10-03, to arrange it better for the next chapter. I'm not normally one to rewrite, so I apologize.


End file.
